1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to methods and systems for marketing and selling goods and services. Certain embodiments relate to methods and systems for maximizing customer choice of goods and services while offering progressive pricing structures.
2. Description of the Background
Many households and businesses use goods and services purchased from several different vendors, even though such goods and services were available from one vendor. For example, in the telecommunications industry, though one vendor may offer wired telephones, local phone service, long distance phone service, pagers, paging services, wireless telephones, and Internet services, a household may purchase these goods and services from various sources. One way to increase a vendors' share of a market is to offer discounts to customers that purchase more than one service or good from the vendor.
There is an increasing trend in the marketplace, particularly in the telecommunications industry, to offer bundled goods and services at a discount in an attempt to capture market share. But several problems arise with such a practice. The creation of bundled offers and their associated price points can be cumbersome when a vendor has a large number of products. Also, communicating such offers to the public becomes increasingly difficult as the number of different package offerings increases.
For example, if a consumer inquires as to the price of long-distance telephone-service, the answer may depend on the current promotion. There may be one price if combined with local-telephone service, another price if combined with wireless telephone service, and yet another price if combined with call waiting and caller ID. And within a particular offering, there may be different levels of service. For example, within wireless telephone service, there may be packages offering two-hundred-fifty, five-hundred, or one-thousand minutes, and additional options of discounted or free nights and weekends or long distance.
Other disadvantages are present in such conventional methods and systems. For instance, the bundling of goods and services as described above reflects choices made available by the provider of the goods and services, and may not coincide with consumer preferences. Additionally, the availability of multiple bundled options may induce consumer confusion, particularly if bundles have common items. Similarly, consumer confusion may result when bundles are modified to reflect new offers.
These and other problems are avoided and numerous other advantages are provided by the methods and systems of the present invention.